John Lachs of Vanderbilt University

This piece was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1988 and inspired a firestorm of responses. Dr. John Lachs proposed this as a one-sheet document for a conversation that he and Executive Director Weber organized in Oxford, MS, in 2008 on “Ethics at the End of Life.” This one-sheet document was hugely successful for spurring inspired yet civil conversation about values at the end of life, as well as whether there should be freedom in end-of-life decision-making, what sort, and what kinds of policies make sense for end-of-life circumstances. The JAMA withheld the name of the author this piece by request.

Printable PDF.

The document is available on the JAMA Web site as an image file. For a printable, searchable (OCR’d) version, click here, on the Adobe PDF logo on right, or on the image here below:

Printable version

Courtesy of the South Puget Sound SOPHIA Chapter

By Dr. Sergia Hay, Dr. Michael Rings, and Matthew Salzano

First used on March 5, 2018 at Pacific Lutheran University

Topic:

Disagreement: Strategies for Talking Across Divides

Hay

Questions for conversation:

1) How can we have productive discussions when there is disagreement?

Rings

2) What does it mean to have a “productive” discussion when there is disagreement?

3) Can tools from philosophy help in these discussions?

4) What are the roles of reason and emotion in these discussions?

Salzano

5) Are there strategies to use (or avoid) in these discussions?

6) Are there times when it is advisable not to engage in these discussions?

Additional Resources:

David Bohm, On Dialogue (New York: Routledge Press 2004), http://amzn.to/2FCdb75.

Daniel Dennett, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking (New York: Norton Publishing, 2014), http://amzn.to/2DeUS2C.

John Dewey, How We Think (New York: Dover Thrift Editions, 1910/2002), http://amzn.to/2Fplxjn.

Jennifer Lackey, The Epistemology of Disagreement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), http://amzn.to/2GarlKy.

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (New York: Dover Thrift Editions, 1859/2002), http://amzn.to/2ty2PQY.

“Disagreement,” Philosophy Talk [Radio], Sunday, December 5, 2010, https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/disagreement.

Bryan Frances, “Disagreement,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2018, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/disagreement/.

In pursuit of SOPHIA’s mission, of building communities of philosophical conversation locally, nationally, internationally, and online, we are continuing our process of creating introduction videos. Two new members joined SOPHIA in the last month or so, and each was kind enough to be willing to create an introduction video. These two fellows are Jim Lyttle and Casey Dorman and the following is a short introduction video of each one. Get to know our new members and welcome them to the group!

Hello, Jim Lyttle!

Jim is on Twitter here, @JimLyttle.

And hello Casey Dorman!

Casey is also on Twitter, here, @ReviewLost.

Welcome, both of you, to SOPHIA! A number of members, officers, and trustees have yet to make introduction videos. The holiday season can be a great time to get that done. Reach out to Executive Director Eric Weber to plan when we’ll make yours!

If you’d like to make a video, reach out to SOPHIA’s Executive Director and we’ll record one. Getting together for that purpose also gives us an opportunity to chat. Enjoy this little intro video featuring Dr. Manninen:

If you haven’t already, consider JOINING SOPHIA!

Here below is the video of our first online symposium, which we organized on the topic of trigger warnings. Note that the audio in the first 8-10 minutes includes some background noise from participants getting set up. We eventually got those sounds under control and know now how to avoid such problems in future discussion. We hope that you enjoy this video and that you’ll join us in the future. Also, send us ideas about topics that you want to talk about. We are looking to put on regular discussions like this one on a variety of topics. We hope you enjoy:

If you haven’t already, you can “like” our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter. You can also JOIN SOPHIA here.